


Spoiled

by aperture_living



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Blood, Death, Gen, SOLDIER being soldiers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aperture_living/pseuds/aperture_living
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no pretty way to die in combat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoiled

**Author's Note:**

> An old fic of mine, but I still kinda like it. Be warned: it's pretty bloody.

There was no pretty way to die in combat. Regardless of what carefully edited movies showed, what they never explained, in the end it was only experience that lead to the understanding of what one was truly facing in war. The determination in dreams and ideals, of the will to live and continue living, was something that overcame an opponent’s face, their body, and if they were trained well, they used it as a tool rather than a hindrance. 

Zack did, after all.

But then the blood was started to spread, spill and splash like a clumsy child with a glass of tomato juice, and reality-based blood was darker than what he remembered in films. A little here, a spot here, trickles and tiny streams, it came easily, with the gruesome splices of skin that split apart with jagged flaps and folds of flesh. If both parties were lucky, one strike would knock them down, no pain, no screams, nothing but the sudden surprise on their face as they fell to their knees, then the ground, none the wiser. 

Zack and his first kill weren’t that lucky. 

Angeal had watched the hesitation slashes, the strain in his trainee’s shoulders as he wielded the sword, the look of regret in those expressive blue eyes. For every swing that was held back, another cut would find its way through Zack’s skin, new wounds, new blood, new scars, yet the puppy would never bark its outrage or pain, never flinch. He wore them with pride and guilt, even as his sword knocked the Wutai soldier’s away, cut through it, and opened his stomach like a red yawn. Intestines tumbled to the ground like a lolling tongue, and the man vomited blood and final meals as he dropped.

“Oh, shit,” Zack murmured, his eyes looking back at Angeal, at Angeal who was walking to him with a strangely sorrowful look on his face, unrestrained and open for their little world to see. The enemy soldier was on his hands and knees, blood so bright that it was electric running down his chin as he desperately tried to scoop the coils back into his eviscerated gut. 

“You do him no service by holding back,” Angeal murmured. 

“I--I wasn’t--” 

“You were.” Angeal thumbed the blood from Zack’s arm, before looking down. “He would be dead if you weren’t. You wouldn’t be bleeding. You’re better than this, and you know it.”

Zack glanced away, but Angeal’s gloved hand was grabbing his chin, forcing him to look back writhing body, the body trying desperately to put itself back together at his feet. The coils of organs were uncooked sausages in his arms, looped around like he was a butcher filling a catering order that was long overdue. His face was white, sickeningly gray in pallor, with wide pleading eyes over a mouth that spat blood and puke as it begged for mercy, for help, for medical aid, for anything in a high-pitched waver. The flesh of his stomach was folded over, flaps that hung and quivered, shaking with each hurried breath, and the muscles beneath worked and parted as he tried to stuff what belonged inside back in there. The SOLDIER cadet felt the bile crawling into his throat, one boot stumbling backwards, but he was held rooted by Angeal’s unyielding grip. 

“This is your life now,” Angeal murmured. “This is what you signed up for. Gongaga doesn’t teach you this, and neither does Midgar’s promotional propaganda posters. Experience, first hand, war and this, those are the only things.

“Don’t forget what being a SOLDIER is, Zack. We’re not heroes to the enemies. Remember that.”

Zack nodded slowly, his hand shaking and the sword held trembling with it. Blood was encrusted on the gloves, along his arm, his mixing with the dying man’s until it was impossible to tell them apart, red and red drying to a flaky, stiff brown to be washed down dark drains when they returned home, forgotten. The man begged again, spitting words of family, of children and a wife, of being young, only twenty with a newborn, and didn’t he have a family? Didn’t he want to go home? Grant him this, please? _Please_?

Zack closed his eyes as the sword slid into the body, the resistance tough through muscle, skin, bones, life. The warm splash of blood dotted his face, speckled along his arms and chest, caught the air in a scent of metallic and spread it to the wind. His hands were numb, trying to shake as they gripped the sword, but the body was a sheath and held it still, almost bitterly.

He heard the slap of the intestines falling to the ground, the kick of a foot against the dirt.

Then, the horrific stillness of nothing.

Zack looked away until Angeal grabbed his chin once more, showed him the pile of a man beneath him, covered in blood and vomit, in needless scars and wounds. “Give him the honor of looking. Give him the honor of memorizing. Don’t forget this, Zack. Don’t forget what hesitating can do.”

The footsteps in the dust of Wutai backroads caught his ears as Angeal walked away, leaving him alone with the mutilated casualty of war. The young SOLDIER waited, agonizingly waited for the world to shift, to fade away with the training hologram.

It never came.


End file.
